HIST 354: Law, Crime, and Police in Early Modern Europe (HC): France

Exercising his action from the cabaret to the drawing-room, from the brothel to the Masonic lodge, would the Paris police be "the most perfect", as some proclaim in the Enlightenment, to hold such a large city in Europe? The vast reform initiated in the time of Colbert in 1666-1667 was not limited to the creation of the general lieutenancy of police. On the contrary, it inaugurated a dynamic transformation of Parisian police powers: the aim was to improve the recruitment and practices of Commissioners at the Chatelet, inspectors and auxiliaries, those "flies" and spies who frequented "little cafes” and shady places, all transformed into "good workers" of public safety. More preventive than repressive, the police reinforce its surveillance over society. Concerned about the "happiness of men in society", it intervenes in the areas of health, roads, arts and crafts, and trade to reassure and protect "good citizens". But this "vigilant and active force" (Louis Sébastien Mercier) is also there to watch, to oust, to enclose, without weakness, the "undesirables" and to silence the "murmuring people". Thus it constantly feeds tensions: resistance never ceases and the crystallization of criticisms around the "despotism" of the police is a powerful ferment of pre-revolutionary effervescence.

Appointed to conquer the “crime capital of the world,” the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light. The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie’s compulsive note-taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker’s riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page.

Louis Mandrin led a gang of bandits who brazenly smuggled contraband into 18th-century France. Kwass brings new life to the legend of this Gallic Robin Hood and the thriving underworld he helped to create. Contraband exposes the dark side of early globalization, revealing connections between illicit commerce, criminality, and popular revolt. As the French began to crave colonial products, Louis XIV lined the royal coffers by imposing a state monopoly on tobacco from America and an embargo on brilliant calico cloth from India. Vigorous black markets arose through which traffickers fed these exotic goods to eager French consumers. Flouting the law with unparalleled panache, Mandrin captured widespread public attention to become a symbol of a defiant underground. Eventually, Mandrin was captured by French troops and put to death in a brutal public execution intended to demonstrate the king's absolute authority. But the spectacle only cemented Mandrin's status as a rebel folk hero in an age of mounting discontent. Amid cycles of underground rebellion and agonizing penal repression, the memory of Mandrin inspired ordinary subjects and Enlightenment philosophers alike to challenge royal power and forge a movement for radical political change.

If Napoleon achieved power thanks to his army, he could only keep it by the skill of his police. The gendarmerie, prefecture of Paris police, imperial guard, ... the emperor was the center of all these services. He knows, thanks to the various reports he receives, the slightest crime committed in the Empire and does not hesitate to manipulate some police to better control others to the point of triggering a real war among the different groups.
With the repression of brigandage, the hunt for plotters, the struggle against desertion and the surveillance of public opinion to better shape it, it is a new history of the First Empire, explored through its darker side.

Listen to "An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748–50" for songs from Poetry and the Police

Audio recording copyright © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

In spring 1749, François Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly hauled off to the Bastille for distributing an “abominable poem about the king.” So began the Affair of the Fourteen, a police crackdown on ordinary citizens for unauthorized poetry recitals. Why was the official response to these poems so intense? In this captivating book, Robert Darnton follows the poems as they passed through several media: copied on scraps of paper, dictated from one person to another, memorized and declaimed to an audience. But the most effective dispersal occurred through music, when poems were sung to familiar tunes. Lyrics often referred to current events or revealed popular attitudes toward the royal court. The songs provided a running commentary on public affairs, and Darnton brilliantly traces how the lyrics fit into song cycles that carried messages through the streets of Paris during a period of rising discontent. He uncovers a complex communication network, illuminating the way information circulated in a semi-literate society.

Un policier des Lumières is an historical essay about the Parisian police from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the French Revolution.

This catalog from an exhibition at the Archives nationales documents the history of espionage and the French state's intelligence services. The coverage ranges from the era of Louis XIV to the present .

They arrested Ravachol, Landru and Mata Hari, dismantled the "band at Bonnot", and their narratives inspired characters as mythical as the Count of Monte Cristo, Arsene Lupine, Fantômas and Maigret. Policemen discovered bodies, hunted down assassins, delivered the guilty to the justice of their time. As writers, they recorded their investigations, their intuitions, their ideas. At the age of retirement, they published, recounted, relived the highlights of a career, not without giving themselves the pleasure of settling some passing accounts. These Souvenirs of police condense a century and a half of criminal and political matters.